The acceptance of wireless devices as a preferred personal communications medium has created a growing demand for such devices. Users of such devices also increasingly expect more functionality and a broader range of services to be made available through such devices. Not only is there a demand for more functionality, there is also a demand for faster response times and more efficient access to remote services.
A major challenge is faced in exposing wireless devices to complex data sources, such as web services, due to the size and complexity of the data structures communicated from such sources. In wired networks and devices where resources and efficiency are not a significant concern, it is permissible to transmit, process and store large and complex data structures.
Complex data structures containing many levels of nesting introduce a significant memory overhead on wireless devices. This impacts performance when accessing such data in a memory store.
FIG. 1 is a block diagram of a prior art network in which wireless device users 10a, 10b operate wireless devices to send web service request messages via a public domain carrier 12 to an application gateway 14. The application gateway 14 forwards the web service request messages through the internet 16 to an appropriate web service 18a, 18b. The messages are processed by the appropriate web service 18a, 18b and returned through the internet 16 to the application gateway 14. The public domain carrier 12 forwards the response messages to the wireless device 10a, 10b which processes the response and displays response content to the wireless device users 10a, 10b. 
FIG. 2 is a schematic diagram of an exemplary web service data structure 28 in accordance with the prior art. FIG. 2 schematically represents an exemplary complex data structure 20 named “GetSenatorInfoResponse”. The complex data structure 20 contains a referring field 22 named “GetSenatorInfoResult” having a field type of “ArrayofSenatorInfo”. The referring field 22 refers to a data component 24 that contains a single field “SenatorInfo” having a field type of array. Likewise, the referring field 26, refers to a candidate data component 28 “LocalAddress” having a field type of “ArrayofLocalAddress”). As will be appreciated by those skilled in the art, this complex data structure requires significant computing resources to store the structure in memory or retrieve it from memory at a rate that is acceptable to most users. Since wireless devices 10a, 10b also have limited available data transfer capacity commonly referred to as “bandwidth”, they generally cannot send and receive complex data structures at a rate that is considered acceptable to most users.
Consequently, there exists a need for a system and method that provides data and message optimization in order to ensure that wireless device response time and wireless messaging efficiency can keep up with demand, and that wireless device users remain satisfied with the performance of their wireless devices.
It will be noted that throughout the appended drawings, like features are identified by like reference numerals.